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Voices: As a nation, we are too divided

Just when I thought our rabidly adversarial two-party system could not get any more dysfunctional, and Americans no more angrily divided by partisan hype and gratuitously exaggerated rhetoric, along comes "the Donald."

Voices: As a nation, we are too divided

Just when I thought our rabidly adversarial two-party system could not get any more dysfunctional, and Americans no more angrily divided by partisan hype and gratuitously exaggerated rhetoric, along comes "the Donald."

Donald Trump was elected, due much to "do-nothing establishment" fatigue. Mainly the screamers are revived.

I think few of us are all liberal or all conservative except by guile or intent. Whether establishment or rogue, politicians make us mad at each other. After hurling a barrage of insults at me, my brother had no interest in hearing about my equal disdain for the extremes of either side, or for my rejection of automatic negativity and fascicle agreeability.

After Trump's election, a good friend of many years disowned me as" not the person I pretended to be." Sad. With the inherent bias in politics and the way that bias is reflected in some news providers, how many citizens actively seek veracity by looking at multiple sources of information?

As a clinician, I well know that emotion and anger is much more powerful than intellect. So do the partisans that use emotions as tools. We need helpful input from principled insiders to recognize demagogues and contrived anger.

If we Americans are more motivated for continued American greatness than for their parties to win, we must first be be kind and then educated instead of incited to anger. We must observe members of the party we relate to with at least as much scrutiny as the other.

An octogenarian gym buddy, on all the uproar and having seen a long line of presidents, observed, "What's the difference?"